Terry Donohue Jenkins had a full and fulfilling life until, under pressure from her family, she got the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Now, she can barely run her business.
In 2021, Pickerington, Ohio, native Theresa “Terry” Donohue Jenkins had a fulfilling life, operating her pet-sitting and dog-walking business, spending time with her stepson and her 1-year-old grandchild and awaiting a new grandkid — her daughter’s second child.
Jenkins also worked out regularly, a habit she began in 1997. She was in “tip-top shape” in 2021, she said.
That was before the then-54-year-old received her first — and only — dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on July 22, 2021. Jenkins immediately experienced an adverse reaction to the shot, which in the coming days morphed into several severe adverse events, including a series of mini-strokes.
Jenkins, now 56, has since been diagnosed with Raynaud’s disease, paresthesia (pinched nerve), bursitis, a microembolism, peripheral neuropathy, small fiber neuropathy and other conditions.
She can no longer exercise and now requires assistance to run her business.
Her father recently died, likely due to adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines, and her brother also sustained adverse events following his vaccination.
Jenkins shared her story in an exclusive interview with The Defender. She provided extensive documentation to substantiate her story.
‘If I wanted to see my new grandchild, I would have to get vaccinated’
Jenkins told The Defender she initially was reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine. “I was against the vaccine the whole time,” she said. “I don’t even take the flu shot. I think I’ve taken it twice in my life.”
In April 2021, Jenkins was infected with COVID-19. At the time, President Biden and federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were strongly encouraging vaccination, even for those who already had recovered from the virus.
According to Jenkins, this messaging influenced her daughter, who told Jenkins that if “I wanted to see my new grandchild, that I would have to get vaccinated.”
Jenkins’ daughter issued the ultimatum in April 2021, well in advance of a planned visit in August of that year.
Jenkins told The Defender:
“I waited until the last minute, and I pleaded with her, trying to tell her ‘I don’t think this is a good idea, because they’ve not done studies on people who’ve had the infection and then gotten the shot. They literally have never tested it.’
“I had heard somewhere about 90 days of suggested wait time [following a COVID-19 infection]. So, I waited 90 days, and I kept procrastinating, but I knew I was getting close.”
Finally, Jenkins went to a local grocery store and decided to get vaccinated while she was there. However, even the pharmacist on site appeared reluctant to vaccinate her. As Jenkins recounted:
“I explained my situation [to the pharmacist] and I was crying, because I didn’t want to get it.
“She asked, ‘Why are you getting this shot?’
“I explained to her why. I asked if I could get the [single dose] Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“She said, ‘I don’t recommend that because of your age, and you’re a woman, and there’s the chance of blood clots.’
“I asked, ‘What do you have?’
“And she goes, ‘Well, we have Pfizer.’
“And I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll take that.’
“She goes, ‘You know, there’s risk to everything.’”
Jenkins said she had searched online and on social media to find information about getting vaccinated after a COVID-19 infection, but at the time, she couldn’t find much.
“I was busy running my business,” she said. “So, I looked where I could, I looked on social media. I didn’t see anyone having a bad reaction.”
She added:
“My brother got the shot and he had COVID before, and he said he was really sick for a couple days. And my sister had gotten a shot and she didn’t feel well for a day or so. So, I expected that.”
But Jenkins experienced a near-immediate reaction, she said.
“As I got the shot, I tasted metal immediately,” Jenkins said. “I waited 15 minutes and my throat was kind of tight, but I really thought it was just because I was crying.”
After the 15-minute waiting period, Jenkins left the supermarket.
“After a couple of hours, I started feeling tired,” she said. “And then probably about four or five hours later, I started feeling tingling. I started getting these weird tingling sensations in my extremities. I’m like, ‘Whoa, this is weird.’ And I thought, ‘Well, this is probably normal.’”
Those symptoms were followed by more fatigue, shortness of breath and later that night, pain in her calf.
Jenkins tried to convince herself that her imagination was playing tricks on her. Nevertheless, she said she began writing a text message to her husband, informing him about how she was feeling and about her whereabouts, as she was spending the overnight hours dog-sitting for a client.
“I literally thought to myself I could die in my sleep,” Jenkins said, “but I just let it go,” thinking she was just being over dramatic.
Still, Jenkins took notes about her symptoms. She said when she woke up the following morning feeling “really sick,” with a racing heart, a cough and fever, shortness of breath, headache, blurred vision, light sensitivity and diarrhea, she thought, “This is worse than COVID.” “I was miserable,” she added.
On the evening of the second night after she got the shot, Jenkins said her hands felt really strange. “My feet felt weird, too. I looked down at my hands and on both of my hands from the second knuckle up, all of my fingers turned completely white, numb and cold.”
That’s when she decided she wasn’t imagining things.
Jenkins went to see her doctor, who told her, “I don’t think you should get the second shot. I think you had an anaphylactic reaction,” basing this diagnosis on the tightness Jenkins felt in her throat.
“I also noticed that when I was there, my blood pressure was 20 points higher than what it usually is,” Jenkins recollected. She told a nurse who said it was probably just “stress” or “anxiety.”
However, her doctor told her that the tingling sensations and other pains she had experienced in the preceding days, which had subsided, were “not side effects of the shot.”
Jenkins requested a letter from her doctor documenting her opinion that she should not receive the second dose — which the doctor provided.
“Because I knew my daughter wouldn’t believe me,” she said.
The next day, Jenkins experienced a series of ministrokes. She said:
“The first one I had, I remember I was walking away from my refrigerator and as I was walking forward, I fell backwards. And then everything got blurry and I felt like I was dreaming. Everything was really surreal.
“I had the TV on, and I could hear what they were saying, but I couldn’t understand the words. So, I hit the information button to try to read it and everything was blurry. I couldn’t read anything, and I couldn’t even read when I got close enough. I couldn’t even understand what the words said.
“And I just thought, ‘This is weird, why is this happening?’ But then it would go away after like 10 or 15 minutes.”
However, convinced by her doctor and nurse that she was just experiencing stress and anxiety, Jenkins did not go to the hospital. “The doctor said I was fine, that I’m okay, so this must just be my imagination,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins said she experienced constant brain fog after this series of mini-strokes, describing it as “walking around with my head in the clouds for weeks, probably for months.”
During this period, the tingling, numbness and cold sensation in her extremities also returned. She also has since heard “ringing in my ears all the time” and experienced blood pressure spikes.
Ultimately, doctors diagnosed Jenkins with paresthesia, peripheral neuropathy, small fiber neuropathy and Raynaud’s disease — as well as microembolism, which was diagnosed by a neurologist a few days after her series of mini-strokes.
“My neurologist told me, ‘You had microemboli that caused you to have these mini-strokes,’ Jenkins said. “She goes, ‘I’ve been seeing this in my patients. I’ve been seeing an overwhelming number of people coming in here after getting the shot that have the same symptoms as you.’ She knew what it was.”
Her neurologist added a note to Jenkins’ file stating that she should not get any more vaccines of any kind, due to her reaction to the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. According to Jenkins, her neurologist said, “You have no history to explain any of the things that you have right now.”
“I still have episodes of blurred vision,” Jenkins said. “And something else I also have is vertigo, which has come and gone. But I’ve been going through time periods of a week at a time where I have this vertigo. Every time I lie down or stand up, I just get dizzy.”
She also goes through periods where she loses hearing in her right ear, she said. “It would be probably 50% of my hearing. Everything is muffled. I cannot make out what anyone is saying and then it just goes away … I’ve also developed problems with bursitis suddenly, in my knee and my hip.”
‘I just felt like doctors don’t really care’
Despite the willingness of two of her doctors to connect her symptoms to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and to write notes advising her not to get any more vaccines, Jenkins said that after some other negative experiences, she…
Read full story: Exclusive: She Got the COVID Shot So She Could See Her Grandchild. Now She’s Plagued by Health Problems. • Children’s Health Defense